Technology
Phase and polarisation imaging
OPIRIS's imaging technology relies on a birefringent diffractive optic, also called a mask. When a beam passes through it, interference produces an intensity profile in a camera's image plane that depends on both the phase and the polarisation of the incident wave. A proprietary algorithm then reconstructs the properties of the incident light from these intensity images.
Incident wave
Vertical or horizontal polarisation of the beam entering the mask.
Birefringent mask
Birefringent diffractive optics that encode phase and polarisation into the diffraction pattern.
Image plane
Intensity patterns recorded by the sensor, from which the algorithm recovers the phase and polarisation information.
The method reconstructs phase, the complete polarisation state and the vector field of the light wave with no moving parts and no external reference arm. The mask design is protected by a patent filed with SATT Erganeo, and the underlying physics is detailed in this Optica article.